


To Heal a Soul

by writerdragonfly



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Epistolary, F/M, Infidelity, Post-Deathly Hallows
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-28 02:29:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 8,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10821867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writerdragonfly/pseuds/writerdragonfly
Summary: Snape, who has fled the Wizarding world a damaged man after the final battle, is on a journey that will show him how to heal his soul, and luckily, he'll have help along the way from a certain know-it-all.





	1. slow spinning redemption

**Author's Note:**

> Hello,
> 
> I have not actively written on this fic in like... four and a half years. Which is ridiculous. I recently reread it [(where it's posted on fanfiction.net)](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6510757/1/To-Heal-a-Soul) and was amazed that _I wrote this_. So, hopefully, I'll be finishing it up shortly. In the mean time, please enjoy the chapters I have already written, available on AO3 for the first time.  <3 The first eleven chapters were originally published between November 2010 & 2012.
> 
> I originally started this when I was nineteen, and there is a thread of infidelity that occurs within the fic that I wouldn't be comfortable playing with now. I do not agree with the choices that some of the characters make and would not put them in those positions if I had started this fic now, but I want to keep this as true to my original premise as possible. That being said, please be aware that the consequences will be addressed.

* * *

 

 

**19/11/2012**

People don't expect me to act the way I do anymore. They think that since I made it out of the War that I must be able to move on from my ways. I did not leave the Hogwarts grounds unscathed. I left only part of a man, half of the partial person I used to be. I cannot speak any longer, I cannot see much out of my right eye on even my better days. I cannot have children, even if I had the ability to find a woman who would bear them. I owe my life to three people who made my life a hell for seven long years, but it is a life I'd rather not have on most days.

I turn my back on others now, without the words I wish I could. My glare has not lost its touch but instead has become more of a monster's haunt. There is no pounding at my door by women who want a man who has won a glorious battle, risked his life. There is no "hurrah" for me these days. I was awarded a low class Order of Merlin for my work, no ceremony to produce it. It does not hang proudly above my mantle nor sit in a frame beside my most prized _Most Potente Potions._

If I am to be honest, truthful in this missive, I must retract an earlier statement. People expect I died the way I lived. My Order of Merlin was awarded posthumously. I have never seen it, only heard of it in passing. I haven't been around another witch or wizard in nearly eleven years.

 

* * *

 

 

**22/11/2012**

I have lived in a small hovel of a place outside an even smaller village than Spinner's End for the past decade. It is too small to have even a Muggle grocer or a doctor within its limits. It suits me. I know the name of every Muggle within the village and the names of most of its meager visitors. With the exception of one young man, I am the youngest in the village by nearly thirty years.

I am also the only without family. I am alone. In a world of teaching and treachery, being alone is difficult. In a world of family and companionship, of love and affection, I am ever more aware of how lonely and painful a life apart can be. My solitude was once my shield, but is now my bitter affliction.

I cannot say that I regret my past actions as a whole, though some I wish erased. My actions saved the child of the woman I was closest to, and despite the catastrophe of a man he had as a father, I am content in knowing that.

 

* * *

 

 

**28/11/2012**

I have never been a nice man. Since childhood I have lived my life apart. Only one soul ever cared to inspire me to live my life closer to the rest of the world, but in the end her fate was not with me. The final battle was a harsh one, one I don't like to think about. It started on the top of the Astronomy Tower at the end of the Spring Term of 1997 when by my hands my patriarchal puppet-master took his final breath.

He wasn't sick, wasn't dying. I know the official party line. "A Horcrux stole his strength and withered his arm."

The truth of the matter is that Albus Dumbledore was not the man he pretended to be. I know many expect that. They have read that insipid woman's horrendous biography and seen many of the terrible facets of Dumbledore's visage. Everything that woman had penned was true, but she had not known the most important pieces; she had never finished his story.

I won't get in to every piece of the man's past, but one important missing piece affected more than just me.

When Tom Riddle was in his fifth year, Minerva McGonagall was in her sixth. The events that occurred were never spoken of, but the sixth year gave up her daughter in order to return to school at all, and Albus never told her of the infant's fate.

I had learned of Minerva's plight one night after the Dark Lord had fallen for the first time. I had begun to think of a life in potions research when she spoke to me of it. We hadn't yet formed any sort of bond, pseudo-friendship or otherwise. I didn't understand the significance until Harry Potter entered Hogwarts and my mark, once again, began to burn.

I had chosen to remain a professor, stay within the confines that remained, for me, closest to home.

But without meaning to I stayed under the thumb of my patriarchal puppet-master.

She had tried to warn me, to convince me to leave. Her story did not make sense to me until that very moment, almost fifteen years later when I was charged with the task of killing Albus Dumbledore at the risk of my very soul.

 

* * *

 

 

**17/01/2013**

I have not written in this journal in almost two months. The pain has been intense. The village elder offered me a handful of something called Vioxx, but the Potions master in me refuses to take a concoction made by a Muggle without knowing what is contained within.

My hands were ruined by a curse that had been designed to destroy my ability to cast a spell. A fallen Portkey, a small round marble that had at some point rolled to my nearly unconscious body, brought me to the entrance hall of Black's decrepit house minutes before I would have passed on. The sudden landing tripped an aging curse that Mad-Eye had placed before his death. A second curse expelled me from the property and into the street. If not for some concerned Muggle calling a hospital, I would have died on a street. I would have died the way I lived—totally alone.

I have been writing, putting the thoughts I never before wanted to string together, in order to calm the violent quivering in my hands. I wish nothing more than to brew a potion again, even if it be the last thing I do. I don't have any other purpose in life. I have nothing more to live for. Except for the potion I always wanted to brew, to create, to bring to life. _Sano a animus._ To heal a soul.

 

* * *

 


	2. hope, dangling on a string

* * *

 

 

**19/01/2013**

I loathed teaching. Snot-nosed brats were still brats when they learned to wipe their noses. Longbottom was not the first insolent student to melt a cauldron, not even the worst. I have no doubt another Longbottom will come along in a few years to make another Potion master's life a living hell for a few hours a week. I could have handled the little devils for years more.

Politics. I loathed teaching. The House system only bred discontent. The staff, for the majority, hated one another.

The closest person I had to a friend knew very little about me. For the most part, it had been by my choice. And when it would have mattered, when I needed the companionship of a friend who knew the whole of me more than I ever had before, she was gone.

She fled the day she learned my Dark Mark was returning to mar the surface of my skin.

I could have told the world about the child torn away from her. I could have told Albus I knew what he did to her when she was bound to keep it secret. I have not a doubt in my mind that she expected me to.

I could not. Whatever foolish sliver of affection borne of our handful of talks and myriad of silent nights in front of a fire stopped me. I did not love her, do not love her. She reminded me, in ways, of my mother before I was accepted into Hogwarts. Stern, yet affection shone quietly in her actions.

I might have hurt her more by keeping the secret of her daughter to myself in the long run.

Lily had been a half of me for so many long years. And yet, years before Minerva had tried to cut ties, she had done the same. The reason she had given me was borne of a threat.

Like Minerva, there was a man at the root of it all.

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore-meddling old fool, patriarchal puppet-master.

He had never been a father, never been an uncle. Why was it so easy to see him for what he pretended to be? I hated the man and yet followed his rules and orders exactly as he asked. Loyalty brought on by a twisted combination of fear and the belief that one would be taken care of.

"It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to your enemies, but a great deal more to stand up to your friends." Dumbledore was not a friend. Not exactly an enemy. Either way, I had not the bravery needed to stand up to him.

What reason had he to tear my grounding away? Was he trying to mold me into his perfect spy? Had it always been his dark intention?

I was but a child.

But now? Now, I am a man with a broken soul.

 

* * *

 

 

**23/1/2013**

Two weeks ago my fifty-third birthday came and went like all others since I was a sixth year—quietly and without mention. I did not receive anything special. I opened no cards or gifts.

The village elder waved at me when I went to procure a bottle of whiskey from the young man at the other end of the village. It is the one and only acknowledgement of the anniversary of my birth that I have received since I began my residence here. Like the brief wave, the bottle of whiskey is my recognition of aging.

This year, I have not drunk myself into a stupor as I usually do. The young man looked much like a student I had once upon a time, and I found myself unable to drink it for thoughts of the world I abandoned when it had first abandoned me.

Has the green-eyed child of Lily Evans married? Have he and the Weasley chit produced a vat of the children he always wanted? Did Granger apprentice and become something of herself? Did Draco Malfoy survive past the trials?

It has not been much of a thought in more than eleven years, what happened after the war was truly over. It did not matter to me. All that mattered was surviving long enough to create my final potion. Now that I have begun to write, to put wayward thoughts together, my mind has wandered to the place I lived before.

And to the little girl separated from her mother.

 

* * *

 

 

**06/04/2013**

 

I find that I can help in the planting. The village has put me up for long enough with no payment other than a few menial tasks. I cannot do much these days. Sometimes, they will come to talk. They will not look at me, do not expect an answer.

They talk for the sake of someone to only listen. For the first time, more than one person needed only my ear.

 

* * *

 

 

**13/06/2013**

I have been unable to write much for a while. The digging and planting eased my hands at first, but left them aching and painful for a long time after. Therapy, I believe some books called it. I need physical therapy to regain the full use of my hands.

Today I received a visit from the young man. He brought whiskey in an unmarked and half-empty bottle and walked with a limp I'd never noticed before. His hair was a violent slash, likely the result of the first half of the whiskey or a bottle before. His eyes, a dark brown, were bloodshot and more than a little cloudy. Perhaps I cannot write it as well as it happened, but it remains so vivid I feel I must attempt, if only to remember this moment.

Despite the agony I must write.

"Tobias... You know what?" he had asked me. It seems so insignificant now, I surmise, but then it seemed so important.

"In a couple days is the anniversary of the day my family disappeared." I could not, would not focus on his words. Why would he tell such a broken man, one who would not, even if he'd the ability to, comfort his sorrowing heart? A bitter tinge hit me in the one spot that children for decades said had dried up.

"I went to visit them. They were gone. Neighbors said the house had been empty for a decade. Couldn't be true, I lived there four years before. Why weren't they remembered? If they moved, why was I not told? It's been almost sixteen bloody years, and I still don't know."

Sixteen years. Sixteen years ago.

Sixteen years ago on this day, I killed Albus Dumbledore.

Why is it now that I recall this? It seems like the day one of the puppet-masters pulling harshly at your fraying strings dies should be a momentous one in memory, not a wishfully forgotten one.

All I recall is a dark bitterness. All I recall is harrowing sadness. Empty. Death would have been accepted then, a fitting albeit unwelcome end to an even more unwelcome life.

"Tobias. You know you're the closest person I have anymore? Ha. What a sad way to end a life." To end a life? I remember being pulled from my errant musings at his words. The way my hands clenched.

No one as young as he should be at death. It is my life that should be at its end.

"I have two days. Heh. Joining my family seems fitting. I only wish I could see them once more. My little baby sister Hermione would be turning thirty-four this year. We'd finally be closer. Thirty-four and forty-nine are rather close."

Hermione.

Thirty four.

Sixteen years.

Hermione.

Thirty four.

Sixteen years.

Oh how fate has seen to make my life turn again.

In a rather dark twisting indeed.

 

* * *

 

**06/15/2013**

 

Today is the day that Hermione Granger's brother said he would die. He has not been back in my hovel since the day he told me. The elder has asked me what the boy told me, but I refuse to write the words, even for the man who has shown me such kindness as to shelter me.

Nathan is his name. I lived near him for more than a decade without knowing that it ended in Granger.

Forty-nine. Still a child. How much difference between the way we are. I am only four years his senior. He still feels as a child to me.

Is it the War? Does that truly age us? Fighting and living in fear, every day battle to survive. While men such as he lived their lives the same that they always had. How I wished for that mundane life, to just be and not spy and lie and pretend that my life truly mattered.

I must stop idly waiting for the moment that my hands stop shaking violently. I need to end this. I leave in the morning to procure belladonna ash for the potion I always wanted to brew, to create, to bring to life. Sano a animus. To heal a soul.

 

* * *

 


	3. winding in, winding out

**16/06/2013**

 

Belladonna ash cannot be found in a Muggle occult shop. No Wiccan girls sell it. They will sell belladonna in dried form, but dried and ashen are different.

I must return to the Wizarding World. I find myself unable to enter the pub across the street. The dead whisper my name. _Severus Snape_.

Why is it that I find myself unable to enter a doorway I'd entered thousands of times? Why is it that I find myself unable to enter the gates into where I truly belong?

The dead whisper my name. _Severus Snape_.

It is ironic, I fear, that perhaps some decades after I was at the brink of insanity, it is now it comes.

Belladonna ash. _Severus Snape_. The dead whisper my name.

I know that it is all in my head. I know that the dead cannot speak. It is fear that drives the incessant muttering of a thousand voices from beyond the Veil.

The Veil.

_The shroud of the dead, the bane of the living._

Belladonna ash. _Severus Snape_. The dead whisper my name. The Veil.

 

* * *

 

It has been a few days since I last wrote. I cannot recall the date. I woke up in Nathan Granger's bed two days ago, and I don't know what led to it. All I remember is the pounding of angry voices in my head and the beat of the rain pouring down.

Nathan Granger is _alive_. I do not understand why it should surprise me. Have I gotten so separated from society that I have forgotten a person's ability to lie? No. If I know anything, it is that people lie.

Albus Dumbledore was a liar; the biggest one I've ever known. He told Harry Potter that finding the Horcruxes and destroying them would end Voldemort's life.

They were never real. Voldemort's soul was indeed unstable, very much so. Every death, every torture, every cast of Imperio, Crucio, Avada Kedavra, tainted his soul to the extreme depths of darkness. Mementos of his kills were all they were. Dumbledore knew; he always had. He also knew he had to gain the trust of Harry Potter and what better way to do that than to reveal his plans for the War?

Six drops belladonna essence, two leaves of premature conium. All the ingredients I've collected for this beginning attempt – two singular ingredients that on their own could be fatal. The belladonna ash became the essence, but the conium grew near the hovel I've been living in. I live a poisonous life, the safest point in my existence.

"Tobias." The words are whispered, raspy. I know they are. It hurts me to no end to feel the air escape my lips.

The Elder. Tobias.

Why had Nathan called me Tobias? My father and I were not one in the same.

The Elder.

I haven't spoken a word since the last time I spoke to Harry Potter more than a decade ago. Not since I thought I was dying.


	4. the shine of it has caught my eye

 

* * *

 

 

**21/06/2013**

Hermione Granger has arrived in the village.

I have been hiding. I saw her coming when I was gathering more conium and have come back to my hovel.

She looks the same and yet so different. She is no taller and looks as if she weighs nearly the same. Her hair is the most profound difference, aside from the age in her eyes and in the lines of her face.

Her hair has been shorn. Short and pixie like.

I have been hiding. I believed I could handle seeing my former life again, but like at the Leaky Cauldron I was only lying to myself. I left that world behind years ago, but it left me behind first long before that.

 

* * *

  


**22/06/2013**

I overheard Granger talking to Nathan today. It did not sit well and I did not understand.

_"You must help him, Hermione."_

_"What are you talking about Nathan? I've just found you again and I'm not about to leave!"_

_"Hermione, I am no longer here. I have been waiting for you to come. Help him, so I can go. I have to. . . I have to go."_

_"Nathan! I've only just found you!"_

I have been pushed into memory and I will not speak of such.

  


* * *

 

 

There is a knock on the door, but I do not answer it. Instead, I begin again to write.

For the first time since I started, no words will come.

I want to know what Nathan Granger does.  


* * *

 

 

"My brother told me to come here. I don't know who you are but he's upset. Do you know why?"

 

* * *

 

 

**23/06/2013**

_"Answer the bloody door!"_

I replay the words in my head and I know something has happened.

I cannot see her. It doesn't matter.

Her voice reminds me of the War.  


* * *

 

 

**01/07/2013**

Hermione Granger broke in. She wore an old flannel shirt I know belonged to her brother.

I did not meet her eyes. Not then at least.

_Nathan is gone._

"Sir, how are you still living?" How fitting. She thought it were by choice? I tap my throat and cease looking up at all.

"You cannot speak?" Stating the obvious? I imagined you were smarter, Miss Granger.

"Sir . . . my brother died. I took him to the hospital, but no one could seem to see him. I spent more than an hour obliviating hospital officials so I could get out of the bloody mental ward without being arrested."

_What?_

  


* * *

 

 

I must complete the potion. I cannot stand listening to the darkness of this world any longer.

_Sano a animus. To heal a soul_


	5. and roped me in

* * *

 

 

**02/07/2013**

The Elder has come to my hovel. It is strange.

"Severus. Are you beginning to understand?" he asked. As if I could begin to know what was going on. As if I knew anything anymore.

It is now that I wish I knew where Minerva's daughter ended up. If I knew, I would know _ something. _

"No," I whisper, the word tearing through my burning throat.

How could I understand that Nathan Granger has been dead since June 15, 1996? I have sat with him, drank with him. He dragged my body back from London when I couldn't handle walking in a bloody door.

" _ What is happening? How could my brother have been alive all this time? _

I remember Hermione Granger's words. I remember her trying hard not to cry, not to show her pain.

She had learned of her elder brother's death only a few scarce days before the year anniversary of Cedric Diggory's murder. He was one of the first Muggles to die during the Dark Lord's second rise, and he hadn't even been killed because he was her brother. He hadn't been in contact with his family in years.

His death was ordered by the Dark Lord because he was a new person in the neighborhood where the Granger's lived. I did not remember his face or his name; just the sorrow I felt. Only the guilt.

No matter what side of the war you are on, there is blood on your hands.

The first blood I spilt of the Second War was his. How have I forgotten?

"Sir. . . was it my fault? Was my brother killed because I am a witch and our parents were Muggles?" No. No, it wasn't your fault, Granger. It was mine. I killed him. It wasn't directly because he was your brother. I still killed him.

I want to die. Must it be that complex?

Granger has not left my hovel in two days, the village since she came. She has not even left my armchair in sixteen hours. For most of those sixteen hours, she has been asleep. In her hands is a worn photograph of her elder brother, a faint track from where her thumb had rubbed the surface.

I am surprised how much I missed hearing someone else breathe. I have not been this close to a woman since I left the Wizarding World. To be truthful, I have not been around a slumbering woman other than students since I was a teenager and Lily was still there.

Not even a painted woman will look twice at me now, a ragged man with only a rasp of a voice.

I write these words as I think them but I cannot keep talking about Lily, thinking about her.

Nathan Granger died at my hands and followed me like a ghost for several more years.

I never knew.

 

* * *

 

 

**04/07/2013**

 

I am vaguely aware that in the Americas they are celebrating an independence day. Here, there can be no such celebration.

Granger has left. I am unaware if she is coming back. In the days since she came to me and cried, I have become used to another person again. I did not speak during the days or nights she was here. I only listened and wrote, trying to will away the pain in my hands that has intensified as of late. I slept very little in those days and found myself strangely comforted by her presence and by the sound of her breath.

I am unsure what is happening. Nathan's un-life is still ever baffling.

 

* * *

 

 

**05/07/2013**

 

I feel as if I have been thrown into the middle of a Christie novel co-written with Beedle the Bard. Mystery wrapped in magic.

The Elder has told me today that his name is Tobias. I knew this and cannot understand why he tells me again. The old man must be losing it, one thinks. At the same time, I cannot help but wonder.

_ Who is he? _

_ Who are the people of this village? _

For once, I truly have no answers. A few months ago, a few  _ days _ ago, I believed that I knew all I needed to know.

Like Granger, I thought I was already dead.

_ Sano a animus. To heal a soul. _

_ So much has happened. _

_ I don't know what it all means. _

 

* * *

 

 

_ [shoved between two ragged pages] _

> _ Severus Snape, _
> 
> _ I don't know what to call you and if I am honest I wish I knew you well enough to call you by name. _
> 
> _ I am an Unspeakable and I was assigned a visit to a small village and investigate. Given that I have primarily been on desk duty at the Ministry for the past few years, it was an extremely unexpected assignment. I was asked to spend at least a week in the village and record discrepancies. _
> 
> _ I learned much but got my heart broken in the process. My brother wasn't a wizard, he wasn't even around us for a few years when he died. Seeing him made me believe the police were wrong until he told me that he had died. He told me there was a purpose in his death and that it was a way to bring you to me. _
> 
> _ I didn't understand. If I am honest, once again, I still don't. Not completely in any case. _
> 
> _ My brother believed that I could help you. I don't know with what or why. I know that before he was gone he said that if I did nothing else, I should do this. _
> 
> _ I will be back in a week. If I could stay with you again I hope you'll see me again. _
> 
> _ -Hermione _

 

* * *

 

 

**12/07/2013**

 

The ache in my hands has begun to lessen. The shaking has begun to stop.

The irony of the situation is not lost on me.

 

* * *

 

 

**13/07/2013**

There is a knock at my door and I know that it is [ink splattered here] Hermione Granger.

I do not wish to answer it. I know that she will open it if I do not.

"Sir, can I. . . Can I speak with you?" she asks shyly, playing with her hands. She seems so young in this moment that I cannot help but remember upraised hands and fervent pleading, near perfect potions and logic puzzles.

I try to speak but nothing comes.

I cannot speak aloud. Ask away. I shall answer here.

_ So I shall ask here, sir. _

_ How long have you been in this village? _

Nearly eleven years.

_ How did you survive? _

By trying not to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An old photo manipulation of[ Nathan Granger.](http://thedarknessbefalls.deviantart.com/art/Nathan-from-To-Heal-a-Soul-199301452)


	6. easier to run

* * *

 

 

Not much is said nor more writ. She speaks a few insignificant words and then, "Sir? What potion are you trying to make? I can help."

_ It is mine. _

She knows but very little. I have not written much, and I will not let her look in the book before the page she scrawled on; I cannot let her see my haunted thoughts.

 

* * *

 

 

**14/07/2013**

What do you want?

_ Why don't you get your voice looked at? _

I cannot afford a specialist nor do I have much of a reason to speak.

_ You have a wonderful voice, sir. I would think that reason enough. _

Have you been drinking?

Granger burst out laughing, quickly covering her mouth with her hands.

Did she find something humorous?

"I'm sorry, sir. But I hadn't realized how positively drunk I sounded. Do you really think I need to drink to want to be around you?"

Why would I not? It is the only reason my company has been sought deliberately since the night I killed Dumbledore.

 

* * *

 

 

**22/07/2013**

An owl came to my window this morning. He would not leave until I let him in. When he came to me, I knew that Granger had gone.

 

* * *

 

 

[another page is shoved here, the edges worn and uneven]

> _ Snape, _
> 
> _ I am sorry to leave so quickly. My children are sick and I must go to care for them. I will be back in a week. _
> 
> _ Let me know if you need any items from the apothecary. I will do what I can to help you, even if it is your potion. _
> 
> -Hermione

 

* * *

 

 

I have no doubt anymore that she married the idiot. I can only imagine what has happened to the world in my absence.

 

* * *

 

 

I have left the village again in search of ingredients I need. I have lived for fifty three years without her.

I can handle a week without her coddling.

Tumeric for memory, chamomile to calm. Soap wort for innocence, and kava to battle anxiety.

Not all the ingredients are deadly. A soul needs balance, peace with war.

_ Sano a animus. To heal a soul. _


	7. replacing this pain

* * *

 

 

**01/08/2013**

August has come. I have not seen a sliver of the girl.

I have a number of ingredients prepared. Jarred and sealed.

 

* * *

 

 

I find I cannot acquire nightshade without identifying myself.

I cannot speak, I cannot sign my signature. I cannot wave a wand and prove who I am.

I have been forgotten in these years.

 

* * *

 

 

It proves to be a very uncomfortable feeling.

Being forgotten.

 

* * *

 

 

**03/08/2013**

Granger returned today. She came to my hovel with her hand wrapped around that of a young boy's.

Her son, I presume.

No red hair though, must not be Weasley's.

"Severus. This is Perseus. I think. . . I think you can help him."

The more I watched the boy, the more I saw another young boy.

 

* * *

 

 

Draco Malfoy was once my godson. Not because Lucius held any favor for me, nor because I was to be entrusted with the care of such a. . .  _ delicate _ child.

No, Lucius was punishing me when he made me a godfather.

I saved his life once.

Lucius Malfoy never forgave me for it.

 

* * *

 

 

"I'm not asking you to. . . to do anything difficult. But he hasn't spoken. Theo. . . Theo doesn't know what to do anymore. No one does."

 

* * *

 

 

It wasn't really about the boy. We both knew that.

She wanted me to feel needed.

I wanted to feel anger.

But I could not.

I cannot recall any time previous in which a mostly selfless act was for my benefit, even an act that was never for that intention.

 

* * *

 

 

Is he literate?

_ Yes, he's not a baby. _

Might I talk to him alone?

 

* * *

 

 

Your name is Perseus?

_ Yes. _

Can you talk?

_ No. _

I cannot talk either.

_ Why not? _

I was hurt.

_ I can't talk. _

Why?

 

* * *

 

 

Perseus was not Granger's child.

He was born early on the thirtieth of April in 1998 to Luna Lovegood and Theodore Nott.

 

* * *

 

 

Luna Lovegood had been pregnant when she was taken to Malfoy Manor at Christmas. She was tortured and beaten while protecting a child growing inside her, who would end up being her only child.

By Easter, she was nearly seven months pregnant. Malnourished and ill, both mother and baby nearly died.

Her health improved after she was brought to Shell Cottage, where Fleur Weasley found her very own mothering instinct.

Two days after giving birth, Luna returned to Hogwarts to help Harry.

She died the next day from a combination of spell damage and blood loss.

Nott was devastated. He had only found her again and she was taken.

Then Fleur Weasley brought him his son.

 

* * *

 

 

_ [slips of paper written in Perseus's hand are stuck between the pages here.] _

>  
> 
> * * *
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _ Mummy talks to me sometimes. My father doesn't know. _
> 
>  
> 
> * * *
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _ You see, my mum died after the Battle at Hogwarts. I was just a baby. _
> 
>  
> 
> * * *
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _ When I stopped talking, she asked me why. _

 

* * *

 

 

"Sir?" Granger's voice interrupted. Her face was ashen as she re-entered the room.

"I have to take Perseus home now. Might I come back afterwards?"

I nodded.

 

* * *

 

 

The boy's voice echoes in my ears.

_ I can see things. Things you have not seen. They told me not to speak until I found you. _

_ Auntie Hermione said your name was Mr. Snape, but they said to call you Tobias. _

His voice had been rusty with misuse and yet eerily clear.

Everything was connected.

 

* * *

 

 

Granger returned by nightfall. Her arms were full of the very nightshade I had attempted to procure.

"Someone reported that a strange man had tried to buy this but would not utter a word."

She sat it on the rickety wooden table with a handful of other ingredients I would not have been able get.

"I knew it was you. I knew you would never ask me to get this for you."

She sat in her chair, her chin resting on her knees. Eyes tightly closed.

"I have to help you, can't you see?"

_ Sano a animus. _

_ To heal a soul. _

"Yes."


	8. something has been taken

* * *

 

**04/08/2013**

It was a scant few minutes past midnight when Granger finally fell asleep in her chair, her head resting on her knees.

After I had spoken, Granger had turned into an excitable monster. As if she never expected a word from me.

I never expected to speak to her.

 

* * *

  
  


She wore a wedding ring on her finger, a simple gold band. It was obvious that the ring was of poor quality and I do not doubt that Weasley truly was her husband.

Not for the first time, I wondered what had happened while I have been. . . here.

  
  


* * *

 

 

There was a ringing echoing through my hovel in the early morning hours and it brought me from what little rest I have managed.

Granger sat, a slim black device in her hand.

The ringing started again and she cautiously stopped the device and placed it at her ear.

"Hello?"

I felt as if I was intruding. It was strange, as this was my home and not hers.

"Ye-yes. I am Hermione."

Something was not right, that I knew. Granger's voice shook when she spoke.

"I. . . I understand, Constable. I won't. I won't call them again."

I am not a nice man. I do not feel the need to cheer someone up who is obviously upset.

"Tea, Granger?"

 

* * *

 

 

Granger was quiet. For several hours, she did nothing but drink tea slowly. When it went cold, she did not bother to reheat it.

In the time that she has spent here alone with me, she has never been this quiet.

 

* * *

  
  


"Sir? Mister Snape?"

Her voice was softer, hesitant. I looked at her for a moment and let her speak.

"I did some things I am not proud of. To keep my parents safe. In the war. I told Harry and Ron, Back when I did it. But they never cared."

I did not speak, though I could guess who it was that she was not supposed to call anymore.

Her parents.

"You. . . you know what it's like. . . to be forgotten?"

Oh, did I know what that was like. Before, and ever more so now.

"My parents. . . I told them who I was. And I told them I wanted to restore their memories."

 

* * *

  
  
  


I cannot imagine loving my parents. My father was a misogynist and a drunkard. My mother's soul was crushed before I was ever born.

My parents met at a pub in Soho in February of 1959. Within a few weeks, my mother was forced to marry my father so that she would not dishonor her family when I was born.

She was disowned for marrying a muggle. That was only the beginning.

Although they had started out happily enough, by the time I was a tot, the happiness was gone.

My father was abusive, towards both my mother and I. On nights when he would come home from the mill as soon as his shift was over, I would leave the house and visit the park.

It was the only way that my parents would be happy.

But most nights, my father stopped at the pub first. It was never happy then. For any of us.

The only thing my mother and I ever shared was magic.

The only gift I ever received from her wasn't even a gift given intentionally. She had thrown her old school books into the fire the winter I turned eleven. While the house was quiet and still late that night, I rescued two books from the fireplace.

_ An Anthology of the Dark Arts by Pandora Nyx _ and  _ Advanced Potion-Making  _ by Libatius Borage.

Throughout my childhood, my mother often ignored me. When she paid me any heed, it was with an icy stare or an angry scream. She rarely spoke to me and never did she use magic.

Both my parents made it obvious that I was not wanted from the start.

 

* * *

  
  
  


"They don't want their memories back. They don't want me back. They said if what I said was true, then I didn't deserve them."

 

* * *

  
  
  


My parents never loved me. So when they were gone, I no longer cared.

 

* * *

  
  
  


"They have a little girl now. She's twelve. Her name is Hermione. She's attending a magic school in Australia."

 

* * *

  
  
  


_ Replaced. _

Being forgotten was an unpleasant feeling as it was.

Being replaced was worse. Lily replaced me once, but I was only ever her friend.

My parents never had other children. My mother killed herself the night I was sorted into Slytherin. My father never looked for another wife.

I cannot imagine how H̶e̶r̶m̶i̶o̶n̶e ̶ Granger felt then.

  
  


* * *

  
  


_ Sano a animus. _

_ To heal a soul. _

And I knew someone who perhaps needed it just as much as I.


	9. This secret I've kept locked away

* * *

  
  
  


**05/08/2013**

I did not speak to her as the story blubbered from her lips, nor did I say a word after. She eventually cried herself to sleep.

When she awoke, she spared me no glances. Instead she graced my threadbare and empty cupboards with an intense stare.

 

* * *

  
  


She left by nightfall.

 

* * *

  
  


**06/08/2013**

When she returned, the sun had risen.

When she returned, my cupboards were no longer empty.

 

* * *

  
  


[a ragged slip of parchment is stuffed here, the words blotchy]

three [ink smeared] carupano cacao beans, sliced lengthwise

 

* * *

  
  


Sometimes I remember who I was before the "prophecy".

Sometimes, I

[there are no more words until the following page and no explanation for the stop]

  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  


"Sano a animus."

I did not look up as she spoke, though I had wanted to see the look on her face as she tried to decipher the meaning.

"A healthy mind? Soul? Is this for you?" Granger asked, my notes crinkling under her grip.

"The. . . potion. . . is not. . . for me."

I missed my voice, how I had been able to coat it with the subtlest poison and whet it to its sharpest point - but to wish for it was to wish for things to be... But was that so wrong?

No, I cannot.

"It's your holy grail, your endgame, isn't it? That one thing you have dreamed of doing for all your life. You spoke of bottling fame, brewing glory, ensnaring senses, bewitching the mind. But this was the one real thing you wanted to figure out, even if no one would know."

My own personal crowning achievement? My Everest?

"Sir. . . Seah. . . Severus?" I could hear something in her voice, not pity or sadness. More akin to compassion and envy?

It was as if I were in the middle of some [smeared ink] temporal spatial distortion, as if I was not on the Earth anymore, but some far away land where everything was different and everything was the same. Like an alternate universe near the same as my own, and yet so, so different.

In a moment, as it came, that feeling was gone.

"What about adding the carapace of a blattella asahinai?"

The technical, the scientific. Yes. Safe.

 

* * *

  
  


[a few pages are torn out here, ragged spikes of paper covered in ink of two separate and distinct styles.]

 

* * *

  
  


Granger and I discussed potions and theory for several hours, most of which occurred on scraps of parchment torn from this very notebook. Unaccustomed to being used, my voice steadily grew more hoarse and rough until it tapered into a whispering nothing.

I have no recollection of having done so in several years-several decades.

Minerva and I used to talk theory.

Lily and I as well.

Would Granger leave once she knew me as well as they did, once she saw the darkness I hold?

 

* * *

  
  


I do not deserve this.

I only deserve death.

 

* * *

  
  


**07/08/2013**

Granger awoke before I had, a situation I hadn't expected since I rarely slept. She was leaning over the cauldron-when had she gotten a gold cauldron?-and she was slowly peeling some sort of yellow apple into the cauldron as it bubbled away.

"Morning, Severus."

She welcomed herself to my name. I know it is not the first time, but it is as if I never noticed before.

"What are you adding?"

"The peel from an Alderman apple. I've got the carapace in the hydra blood and belladonna essence and-"

I had not expected the sudden explosion of gold smoke and the sweet scent of vanilla.

I did not expect her giggling to follow either.

"It worked!" Her exuberant glee was almost infectious. But I refrained from letting out a laugh.

"Did you say hydra blood?"

 

* * *

  
  


I have no idea why I had decided to say it, to ruin the happy moment of a discovery for my potion.

Except, perhaps, because I was not the one who found it.

  
  
  


* * *

 

"Well, yes. The hydra blood is known for its extremely poisonous prop-"

"Fifteen years ago it cost several hundred galleons an ounce."

"Well, I paid for-"

"I'm not a charity."

I walked out on Granger, not looking back.

  
  


* * *

 

 

The first time Lily introduced me to her parents, I was nine years old.

I was wearing my favorite jumper-a dark blue one with a little silver dragon on the left sleeve. I remember because it was the last time I saw the jumper.

I had taken it off in their sitting room where I listened to Lily and her father play the piano together. I do not know what happened to it, only that it was gone.

  
  


* * *

 

Two weeks later, Lily's mother gave me a new jumper. It was ugly, but it was warm.

I left it on the doorstep and went home.

I did not see her parents again until the day before I was to leave for Hogwarts.

I was not a charity.

And my father did not take kindly to my missing jumper. A new one would only give him more reason to do what he always had.

 

* * *

  
  


_ Sano a animus. To heal a soul. _


	10. interlude

* * *

 

**09/08/2013**

_ I have killed more than I can recall. It was never fun, or easy. More often than not, I was filled with a nearly unbearable guilt. _

_ I killed a child once. She wore her blonde hair in a braid, and her blue eyes were full of fear. _

_ And tears. _

_ I killed her. _

_ She was fifteen years old in 1979. Her name was Bridget Smith. _

_ She was a Muggle girl who had come home at the wrong time. _

_ Her face is engraved beneath my eyelids. I see her when I close my eyes. _

 

* * *

  
  


_ [There is a sketch here. Of a girl with her jump rope, smiling widely.] _

 

* * *

  
  


_ I see them all. _

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


"I'm not going to apologise, you know. For doing what I did," she tells me. I had not expected her to.

"I asked someone to met me here. Because there is something I need to do."

For my benefit, or her own?

There is a knock.

And everything  _ changes. _

 

* * *

  
  


I have made far too many Unbreakable Vows in my life. I have vowed to do much more than I ever should have.

I vowed to Lily when we were First Years that I would always love her. I vowed to Dumbledore to protect Harry. I vowed to Narcissa to save her son's life.

I vowed to myself that I would finish this potion, this  _ sano a animus,  _ then I would allow myself to die.

 

* * *

  
  
  


Hermione  _ Weasley  _ vowed to help me with my potion. She vowed. She vowed an unbreakable vow to do whatever it took to assist in creating a potion to heal a soul.

Stupid fucking bint was willing to widow her insipid husband, and leave her children motherless if it meant that I could make a potion and die. So I could make a potion that thousands have tried to make since the dawn of magic.

She was risking more than she would ever know...

  
  


* * *

 

 

Theodore Nott was the one who came to witness her vow. He did not bring Perseus, and I am glad for it.

He tried to talk  _ Weasley  _ out of it.

But in the end, we all knew she was a stubborn chit.   
  


* * *

 

 

I will finish the potion.

And then I will end everything.

 

* * *

  
  


_ Sano a animus. _

_ to heal a soul. _

_ to release it from life at last. _


	11. just one touch and I'd be in

* * *

 

 

**_Touch. Skin. Soft._ **

 

* * *

  
  


**_Flesh, unbidden, desire._ **

  
  


* * *

 

 

_ The words run through my head. _

 

* * *

  
  


_ And then: _

_ "Severus?" _

_ She whispers to me, reaching an arm out to touch my face. _

_ Her hand is soft and the light brush of her fingertips tickles my cheek. _

 

* * *

 

 

"I, Hermione Jean Weasley née Granger, declare my vow to-"

 

* * *

  
  


_ "Hermione, what are you doing?" _

_ The words come out unbidden. Why do I care what she is doing? _

_ Why does it matter? _

_ She stands higher, her heels and the arches of her feet lifting off the ground. _

  
  


* * *

 

 

_ And then _

_ her _ lips

capture _ mine. _

 

* * *

  
  


"Severus Tobias Snape, for as long as I am able. . ."   
  
  


* * *

 

 

_ "Severus." she states it so matter-of-factly, like she knows something that I do not. _

_ She kisses me again, less cautious and more certain. _

 

* * *

  
"I will do everything I can,"

 

* * *

  
  


_ At first, I do not return it. _

_ But inevitably, desire wins out. _

 

* * *

  
  


"To ensure that your task of creating this potion,"

 

* * *

  
  


_ It is not long before _

_ quiet desire _

_ and unspoken want _

_ become ferocious beasts of passion and need. _

 

* * *

 

 

"Is completed to the extent that you desire."

 

 

* * *

  
  


_ Her warm, soft hands make their way through the folds of my tattered robe, _

_ tearing open my shirt, buttons clattering to the floor. _

 

* * *

  
  


"Until such a time occurs,"

 

* * *

  
  


_ "I'm yours. Take me," she rasps, pulling her face away from mine. _

_It happens too fast for my brain to process. I am feeling her breasts one moment and the next I am dropping my trousers to fuck her against the_ _cupboards_.

 

* * *

  
  


"I am yours."

  
  


* * *

 

_ She tastes like burnt coffee and licorice. _

 

* * *

  
  


"I will do whatever it takes to help you."

 

* * *

  
  


_ There is nothing gentle or slow about our coupling except the beginning. I pound into her as she cries against me, her fingers digging into my back. Its crude, rough, and unforgiving sex. _

 

* * *

 

 

And then, as I feel my control crumbling, I wake up.

 

* * *

  
  


**10/08/2013**

It is half past three in the morning.

 

* * *

  
  


I do not often sleep.

Even less often do I dream.

 

* * *

  
  


Most of my dreams are nightmares.

 

* * *

  
  


And I cannot decide what this one was.

Dream or nightmare?

 

* * *

  
  


Something tells me that my writing has become a release I had not known I wanted. [The words are struck through twice, but are not blotted out.]

  
  


* * *

 

 

I cannot recall having written the dream down. Why had I? What had possessed me to write down something so. . . inappropriate?

 

* * *

  
  


Whatever the reason for my nightmarish dream, whatever the reason that insipid chit chose to force herself into my presence, whatever the reason...

I do not know what I mean anymore.

 

* * *

  
  


I need sap from a Dracaena Cinnabari.

 

* * *

  
  


I need [ink is smeared across the next few words, deliberately obscuring them.]

 

* * *

  
  


_ sano a animus. _

_ to heal a soul _

**Author's Note:**

> Written for PotterPlace's Alternate Universe Challenge (2010?). Winner of Best WIP and Most Interesting Premise.
> 
> Prompts used:
> 
> # 18. Write a story with Snape as he is in canon. He has lived through the final battle and played a big part in it. What part did he play? What does he do with his life now that he's free?
> 
> # 2. A canon character discovers something important about himself.


End file.
